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A Call To National Service

Topics: classic

Up and be doing, all who have a hand     To lift, a back to bend. It must not be     In times like these that vaguely linger we     To air our vaunts and hopes; and leave our land     Untended as a wild of weeds and sand.     - Say, then, "I come!" and go, O women and men     Of palace, ploughshare, easel, counter, pen;     That scareless, scathless, England still may stand.     Would years but let me stir as once I stirred     At many a dawn to take the forward track,     And with a stride plunged on to enterprize,     I now would speed like yester wind that whirred     Through yielding pines; and serve with never a slack,     So loud for promptness all around outcries!     March 1917.

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"Up and be doing, all who have a hand..."

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